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<title>Several Times Scully Got Locked Out Of Her Motel Room In Her Scanties (First Time Smut Ensues) by DanaScullyMakesMeFeelAutopsyTurvy</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24913312">Several Times Scully Got Locked Out Of Her Motel Room In Her Scanties (First Time Smut Ensues)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanaScullyMakesMeFeelAutopsyTurvy/pseuds/DanaScullyMakesMeFeelAutopsyTurvy'>DanaScullyMakesMeFeelAutopsyTurvy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The X-Files</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blow Jobs, Cunnilingus, Episode: s01e09 Space (X-Files), F/M, Face-Sitting, Fingerfucking, First Time, Inappropriate Erections, Oral Sex, Post-Episode: s02e13 Irresistible (X-Files), Post-Episode: s03e17 Pusher, Post-Episode: s03e18 Teso Dos Bichos (X-Files), Sharing a Bed, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:08:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,456</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24913312</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanaScullyMakesMeFeelAutopsyTurvy/pseuds/DanaScullyMakesMeFeelAutopsyTurvy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the June 2020 Smut Exchange</p><p>Prompt: Scully accidentally gets locked out of her motel room while scantily dressed, and she has to stay in Mulder's room. Smut inevitably ensues. Anywhere in seasons 1-7. This prompt intrigues me imagining it in any of those seasons.</p><p>Well, Nicole, that prompt intrigued me in all those seasons as well... I got to thinking how it would be different with every passing year, as their relationship grows and evolves. I plan to eventually write seven, but here are the first three seasons.</p><p>Huge thanks as always go to my betas: on this one, Annie, Kasey, Monika, Lin, and Leo. Couldn't have done it without you wonderful ladies, especially Annie who gave me the sage and valuable advice that ‘Nicole loves an accidental boner’, and Leo who kept me from inadvertently including lines unintentionally but wholly lifted from the incomparable SomeKindOfSeizure’s When The Ink Dries.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fox Mulder/Dana Scully</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>209</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>X-Files Smut Fanfic Exchange (2020)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Space (Season One)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnlyTheInevitable/gifts">OnlyTheInevitable</a>.</li>



    </ul><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Scully glows up.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Well, somebody had to make Space interesting.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They sat on the city steps in the midday sunshine awaiting another of Mulder’s mysterious informants. She, eating a sad little excuse for a sandwich: cucumber-dampened white bread encompassing roast chicken lovingly Saran-wrapped and pressed into her hand after Sunday lunch at her parents’ house. An awkward lunch, during which her father had accomplished the stellar feat of not asking her about her work once. <em> I should have cheered everyone up by asking if anyone had heard from Charles lately, </em>Melissa had joked, darkly, over the phone afterwards. </p><p>The sandwich stuck in her throat a little as she swallowed, and out of nowhere, everything felt so… insufficient.</p><p>Was this really her life now? Crackpots and conservative suits and no sex since Jack? Reading journals alone on Friday nights and eating her mother’s leftovers?</p><p>She was still stashing a fastidiously initialed brown bag in the Bureau staff kitchen fridge each morning, as she had been in the habit of doing at Quantico. </p><p><em> Dana Katherine Scully, you’re hardly a schoolgirl anymore</em>, she told herself. </p><p>Perhaps it was time to graduate to lunch in the cafeteria, like one of the big kids. </p><p>Mulder nibbled on his inescapable sunflower seeds. Rental car cup holders. The top drawer of the basement desk. The bottom drawer, and the middle. Even loose, once, inexplicably, in her suitcase when she arrived home from a three-night case in Iowa. They were everywhere, pervading her entire life with their woody scent and their easy charm just like the man who unceasingly consumed them.</p><p>He was close, now, his knees spread wide and swinging with casual rich-kid confidence as he began to lose patience with his anonymous NASA tipster. Scully kept her stockinged legs primly pressed together, her well-lined heavy linen skirt draping over her kneecaps, preserving her modesty. His fingertips brushed her own as he handed her the informant’s note, and she was glad of the excuse to break his gaze, to look down and away from his face; the inevitable thrill she was coming to know so well shooting through her body from tip to toes. </p><p>When the Space Program whistleblower did arrive, it was a she; a development Scully could well have done without. Especially one as… developed as this. </p><p>Long and lean, blonde, finessed; Michelle Generoo looked exactly like the full-sized version of the girls Scully imagined Mulder growing up with on Martha’s Vineyard, summering in Rhode Island, picnicking on lush lawns by sparkling waters while she herself played hopscotch with scavenged pebbles on Navy base blacktop, or avoided cracks in uneven paving slabs as she skipped along in hand-me-down pleated skirts and fraying hand-knitted sweaters. This was probably exactly the WASP-y horsewoman type Mulder’s parents had always envisaged him marrying, with her tweed jacket and her long silky locks and her mirror-lensed aviators. </p><p>Not a squat, pale, Irish Catholic Navy brat with full cheeks, wiry russet hair and stubborn freckles that were probably popping exponentially with every second spent sitting in this sunshine. Who still brought homemade sandwiches to work.</p><p>Michelle Generoo: Mission Control Communications Commander for the Space Program in Houston. <em> Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me now, for I must have sinned, and am being punished with the early-afternoon arrival of Fox Mulder’s ideal woman, sent from heaven to enact my own personal hell.  </em></p><p>Scully hated this feeling: this creeping sense of little sister inferiority. It was the mid-semester first day at a new school all over again, having been transplanted with her father’s latest deployment; Bill laughing and joking with the jocks or the prettiest clique of girls he could find, she hiding with a book in the library. It was enviously watching Melissa tame her curls into elaborate braids when all she could manage was a stubby ponytail with lumps at her crown, aged seven, twelve, twenty-nine. </p><p>What was it about prepubescent inadequacies that made them so infuriatingly unassailable? Successfully reinterpreting Einstein and near-perfect pistol qualification scores had only ever compensated for so much.</p><p>At the mention of a fiancé - a Shuttle Commanding <em> astronaut </em> fiancé, no less - Scully relaxed somewhat. For once, she was glad that Mulder’s particular obsession with certain matters of the universe was a little less than impressive to the casual observer. </p><p>Mulder disappeared off into the city on some unspecified errand, and sent her back to the Hoover Building to arrange flights and accommodation, agreeing to meet her at the airport.</p><p>On the plane, he seemed disappointed when she didn’t want to read his brand new copy of <em> NASA: A History of American Space Travel</em>, and peppered her with trivia instead.</p><p>“Did you know, all twelve men who walked on the moon agree, the surface smells like spent gunpowder?”</p><p>“Oh really,” Scully said. “And what did the women say?” </p><p>Mulder looked a little uncomfortable. Having made her point about why she might, perhaps, feel a little excluded from his spaceboy enthusiasm, Scully pondered this fact.</p><p>“They can’t remove their helmet on the moon; there’s no atmosphere.” She countered. “How do they know what it smells like?”</p><p>“From the dust left over on their spacesuits,” Mulder was clearly happy to be able to inform her.</p><p>Scully frowned at him. </p><p>“You think they’re so cool, don’t you Mulder?”</p><p>He looked personally injured. “Scully, how can you be the one person in the universe - a physicist, no less - who doesn’t think space travel is cool?”</p><p>She turned her torso in her narrow seat to face him.</p><p>“Mulder, when I was five years old, for Apollo 11, I was just as excited as you are now. My older brother and sister and I followed the news of the mission; we watched the moon landing just like everybody else. Bill and Melissa dressed up as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for Halloween that year; they made me be the Stars and Stripes so we could all pose for photos together. I had to stick my arm out and wobble the flag. We were just as space crazed as anyone. And over the years, as the missions continued, I read everything, I mean <em> everything</em>-” Mulder nodded; he could surely believe that of Scully at any age - “and I found out some trivia of my own.”</p><p>Mulder titled his head, curious.</p><p>“You know, a spacesuit is a sealed environment. It has to be airtight, right?”</p><p>Mulder nodded. </p><p>“And spacewalks last between five and eight hours on average.”</p><p>Mulder was listening intently.</p><p>“Well, there’s… nowhere to… go. When you have to go,” she gestured euphemistically. “And in a zero-gravity environment - or any environment, in fact - you don’t want to just relieve yourself inside the suit.”</p><p>Mulder frowned.</p><p>“So they wear these… things. It’s called a MAG: A Maximum Absorbency Garment,” she enunciated carefully. “You just… let it go, and it… absorbs it.”</p><p>Mulder looked perturbed.</p><p>“So basically, underneath that cool, space-exploring exterior,” Scully continued, “you’ve got a bunch of highly trained, hero-worshipped men - and now, women - floating around wearing adult diapers.”</p><p>Mulder swallowed hard.</p><p>“You know, I have a little brother. Charles. When he was still wearing Pampers I would watch my mom changing him, and I’d smell those foul odors and witness the frankly terrifying contents in some detail, and I just - I could never look at astronauts in the same way again after I found out about the MAG. I don’t know, it just ruined it for me.”</p><p>Her partner sat back quietly in his chair, more than a little disturbed.</p><p>Scully smiled at him weakly, and decided to take a nap.</p><p>On the tarmac in Houston, the cabin lights, dimmed for landing, switched back to full brightness as the seatbelt indicator dinged off. Mulder sprang out of his seat, already reaching up for the overhead bins to retrieve their luggage. </p><p>Scully sat calmly with her forest-green briefcase on her lap, not willing to pointlessly stand for ten minutes while the passengers in rows A-R filed interminably slowly up the aisle, huffing and checking her watch as though that would change the physics of the aircraft and hurry anything along. </p><p>No, patience had always been her friend; she would await her turn peacefully, could wait for anything forever, so long as she knew for certain it was coming to her.</p><p>Alighted, they bypassed the checked baggage carousels, Mulder carrying the suitcases and Scully toting only her leather satchel. The pair walked to the Lariat desk, where Scully hung back, and Mulder flirted with the smiling clerk working the night shift.</p><p>In the car, Mulder questioned her again about the arrangements.</p><p>“Intercontinental, Scully? It’s probably the furthest possible airport from the Space Center.”</p><p>“...and all requisitions would let me book at such late notice. The flights into Hobby were almost double the cost. It would be a waste of taxpayers’ money.” She signalled right, checking both directions. </p><p>“Are we heading further North, Scully?” Mulder asked, checking the constellations through the windshield.</p><p>She tsked and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “It’s late. If you want to make all future travel bookings, be my guest, Mulder. But as it stands we’ll stay up here tonight, drive down for our eight-thirty a.m., and stay down there from tomorrow.”</p><p>At the mention of the morning meeting with Lt. Belt, Mulder brightened, and stuck his head back in his book for the remainder of the journey to their motel. </p><p>When they arrived at the Spring Creek Mercury Motorlodge, she threw him a look. A warning shot. </p><p>
  <em> Don’t say a word, Mulder. </em>
</p><p>The motel took shabby to a whole new level: the paintwork was more chips than oil-based matte; the blown bulbs outnumbered the working ones, the woodwork of the bare-bones portico looked like it should have been condemned alongside the Rosenbergs.</p><p>The sign on the office door declared, ‘Desk open 7 a.m. - 10 p.m. ONLY ring bell outside of opening hours for ABSOLUTE EMERGENCIES.’ </p><p>Scully checked her watch. It was approaching midnight. A handwritten Post-It stuck at an angle underneath read, ‘Scully booking, rooms # 8 &amp; 12. Doors open. Keycards inside.’</p><p>“Always nice to experience that famous Southern hospitality,” Mulder deadpanned, peeling the note from the glass. They moved along the walkway, counting up as they went.</p><p>The door to number eight was propped barely ajar with a rotting two-by-four. Scully could see the square of exposed woodwork where an old lock mechanism had been removed: replaced by a newfangled electronic keycard system. She ran her eyes over the crumbling porch roof and thought, <em> Really? </em> This <em> is where they chose to invest their refurb budget? </em></p><p>Mulder pushed the door open for Scully and held her gaze as she stared at him momentarily. He looked like he was about to follow her into the room. </p><p>“Thanks,” she gulped, taking her suitcase from his hand.</p><p>But he stayed put outside, grabbing the handle to pull the door shut, double checking their plans for the morning. “See you at seven-fifteen then? All checks complete and ready to strap ourselves into the command module?” He grinned.</p><p>Scully dropped her case onto the bed and sighed. He was going to be insufferable tomorrow.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>***</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>After showering, hanging up her burgundy pantsuit for the next day, then losing a fight with the room’s overactive heater, Scully unravelled the tightly rolled pink satin pajamas from her suitcase. <em> You get fewer wrinkles if you roll rather than fold,</em> her mother had taught her. </p><p>Stepping into them, she could already feel herself perspiring lightly, and wondered if it would be better to do without the pajamas or the comforter. Her mind flashed to the various possible emergencies that might see her fleeing her room in the middle of the night: a fire, a tornado, an intruder. </p><p><em> Keep the pajamas, lose the comforter</em>, she decided.</p><p>But she suspected she’d need more to keep herself cool. She remembered passing an ice machine a few doors down, and grabbed a metal bucket left on the dresser for just such purposes, tucking her keycard into the breast pocket of her nightwear as she went.</p><p>She was so warm and the ice machine was so close, she didn’t even bother with shoes as she tiptoed the few feet along the walkway. The machine hummed and clanked as she lifted the front and noisily plunged the bucket into the crisp, dry cubes.</p><p><em> Ice</em>.  </p><p>The Arctic Ice Core Project. Alaska. A sparsely appointed supply closet. Mulder crouching down to her level and hissing his balmy, furious breath directly into her face. </p><p>
  <em> I don’t trust them. I WANT to trust you. </em>
</p><p>He’d been angry and sweaty and ripe, and it had been the two of them against the others. They’d made what felt like a binding pact, whispering conspiratorially; sealing it with their laying on of hands.</p><p>If she’d been asked prior to that about the most intimate part of a person’s body, she might have given the same answers as anyone else. Reproductive organs her studies had given her medical names for. Mammary glands meant for feeding young but warped by western culture into symbols of sex and shame. Perhaps the cushiony swell of the gluteus maximus, so favored by jocks, and creeps in bars. </p><p>But she’d finished that case on the Icy Cape with the discovery of more than a new species of worm; she’d learned for the first time about the deep, heady, overwhelming intimacy of touching another person at the back of the neck. </p><p>Jesus, she’d already been so wet when he’d grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back to inspect her spine. She feared her unguarded gasp had given her away. And when he’d brushed aside her hair and lain his whole palm against the nape of her neck, awaiting the telltale wriggle of the homicide-inducing parasite, it was she who had squirmed beneath the hot, unrelenting pressure. </p><p>Oh god, what he’d be able to do to her with those big, strong, capable hands. </p><p>Alaska at that latitude had average winter temperatures of less than zero degrees Fahrenheit. November on the North Slope saw little more than three hours of sunshine a day. They regularly experienced impenetrable blizzards that could freeze a person to death in under an hour. </p><p>But when Dana Scully thought of the Icy Cape, all she could feel was searing, blazing, pulsing heat. </p><p>She filled the ice bucket, slammed the machine shut, and carried her personal cooling system back to her room, balancing it on her hip like an infant as she swiped the keycard for entry.</p><p>She got a red light.</p><p>Furrowing her brow, she swiped again.</p><p>Red.</p><p>Again.</p><p>Red.</p><p>Sighing her frustration, she ran the card through the slot several more times, resting the bucket on the floor and jiggling the handle as she tried over and over for green, listening for the buzz of the latch electronically pulling back.</p><p>Nothing.</p><p>She threw her hands up in the air and tried twice more to no avail.</p><p>She looked about her for assistance, finding none. No one was about. She started off towards the office and slowed as she reached the door. She re-read the sign.</p><p>
  <em> ABSOLUTE EMERGENCIES. </em>
</p><p>Well, she couldn’t get into her room. Surely that was an emergency. She pressed the bell and waited, but no one came. She pressed again, and again, nothing. This was ridiculous. She tried once more with the bell, and after two minutes, sighing furiously, strode back along the walkway, her bare toes starting to go numb. She’d successfully cooled off, at least.</p><p>She continued past room eight, doubling back to try the lock three more times then kicking the door with great vexation before jogging up towards number twelve, wrapping her arms around her breasts to warm herself. The ice bucket stood sentry, dripping condensation.</p><p>She lifted her knuckle to knock on Mulder’s door, then hesitated slightly. She stole a glance down at her pajamas. They were not thick, and clung to her curves, puckering at her bare nipples. Mulder had seen her wearing far less - had checked her for mosquito bites clad only in what her maternal Grandmother would have called her smalls on their very first case - and remained professional, but that had been a rare exception, borne of her neophyte panic. She worked so hard to be taken seriously, to be seen as a colleague and an expert and a peer, and not as a sexual object. It was hard to project an air of authority in pastel pink satin with your breasts announcing themselves to anyone within five hundred yards. But Jesus, it was freezing out, and she had to be up and dressed in less than seven hours. She wasn’t about to spend a frostbitten night out in the cold and give herself hypothermia for the sake of avoiding a little embarrassment. She was a fully grown woman; Mulder, a fully grown man. They were both adults here. They could be mature about this.</p><p>She knocked, hugging her chest again afterwards.</p><p>Mulder opened the door still in his shirt and tie, although his jacket was hung over the desk chair in the corner. The NASA book lay face down, open on the bed. He chewed on one of his infernal seeds.</p><p>“You okay, Scully?” he asked, frowning. “Couldn’t sleep?”</p><p>“Couldn’t get back into my room,” Scully explained, huffing. “I went out for ice and my… the keycard doesn’t work.”</p><p>“You should ring the bell for the owners,” Mulder suggested, unhelpfully.</p><p>“I did,” Scully said, pointedly. “No answer.” She looked up at him and pressed her lips together apologetically. “Can I come in?”</p><p>“Of course, of course,” Mulder said, standing back to let her enter. He stood with his back to the door after it was closed. “You can sleep in here; it’s no bother. I’ll crash on the floor.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Scully said, perching on the desk. Mulder sat himself on the end of the bed and gazed over at her.</p><p>“You cold?” he asked.</p><p>Actually, Mulder’s room was as toasty as hers had been, and her toes were already thawing out.</p><p>“Warming up,” she said, thankfully.</p><p>“Just that you’re… hugging yourself,” he explained, gesturing at her arms, still clamped across her unsecured bosom.</p><p>“Oh,” she said, self-consciously, but let her arms drop slowly to her sides, gripping the edge of the desk with both hands for security. “I’m not… wearing very much, is all.”</p><p>“Oh,” he echoed softly, his eyes scanning the length of her nightwear all the way to the floor and back up again. Yes, she was certainly feeling some heat once again.</p><p>“What you <em> are </em> wearing is… very nice though.” His eyes settled on her own for a few seconds, then flicked down to her breasts, and she inhaled sharply, silently, she hoped in retrospect. When he looked back at her face, her mouth was hanging slightly open, and she caught herself, licking her lips for discipline, her chest heaving. He looked down again. </p><p>She felt her cheeks burning, and averted her eyes to the book on the bed, a change of focus for her mind, which was racing with thoughts of candlelight and shower-wet hair, of thermal shirts and platonic supply closet fumblings: Mulder and his fingertips the common denominator in these scenarios. </p><p>She forced herself to look back at him. He was comfortably staring now, his face giving nothing away, but she knew he was quite aware she’d seen him appreciating her exposed form. He was leaving this up to her.</p><p>She wrestled with her conscience.</p><p>She shouldn’t do this. They were partners. It was against Bureau policy. It was unprofessional. It could ruin her career if it ended badly. Worse, it could come between her and Mulder, drive a wedge between them and prise apart their newly cemented friendship. </p><p>But…</p><p>She thought of Oregon and hands and Alaska and ice, and she knew what she wanted.</p><p>
  <em> You’re hardly a schoolgirl anymore... </em>
</p><p>She stood up slowly, wordlessly taking a few steps towards Mulder on the bed. Yes, they were both fully grown, and she had some very adult ideas about what they could do together.</p><p>She paused one or two paces from his knees, and held his gaze for a moment. She let her lips fall open once more, her breathing labored, and she saw his breath was keeping pace with her own.</p><p>She thought of Michelle Generoo, and of her own jealousies and insecurities, and second guessed herself momentarily. She’d always suspected she wasn’t Mulder’s type. Yes, he had moments ago brazenly taken in the sight of her nipples brushing against the silky confines of her pajama top, but he was a red-blooded straight male, and they had been <em> right there</em>, still standing at attention from her time out in the cold. And yes, he was looking at her intently now as she crossed the room, the propulsion of months and months of unverbalized, unresolved sexual tension at her back, but his expression was blank, and he might be nervously wondering how the hell he was going to abort this mission.</p><p>There was one way to be sure. He had done his fair share of looking; it was her turn to be brazen.</p><p>She dropped her gaze to his lap, seeking a different kind of green light.</p><p>In the dim glow coming from the slightly open bathroom door, she found exactly what she was seeking. The bulge that tented Mulder’s pants cast a promising shadow. She was go for launch.</p><p>She took another step, and found his eyeline once more.</p><p>His pupils were dilated, his lips pillow-soft and pouting, the ridge growing noticeably larger even in her peripheral vision.</p><p>She reached down for his left hand and brought it to her breast, pressing it against herself over the pajamas.</p><p>“Make me see stars, Mulder,” she whispered, breaking into a lazy smile.</p><p>His momentary expression of disbelief gave way to a grin, and he looked up at her with reverence. She let go of his fingers, dropping her arm to her side once again, and his palm moved with feathery softness over her breast, centering her nipple in the smoothest spot, where you’d clutch a baby’s fist, or a prized possession. The heat of his hand radiated through the satin, the friction of skin on fabric even more erotic than direct contact. Their gazes were locked. His mouth fell open a fraction, mirroring hers, and he raised his other hand to work both breasts, his fingers held up and away from her body as he traced circles with her hardened peaks against his deep volar arches. She closed her eyes and moaned, low and soft, letting her head fall backwards. Her knees went limp, and Mulder steadied her with one hand, docking her at the hip.  </p><p>His grip sent shockwaves to her core, her pulse now strongest between her legs. She knew she was already leaving a damp mark on her pajama bottoms. </p><p>She lifted her head back up and looked down at Mulder, still seated on the edge of the comforter. They panted together in the quiet, each awestruck by the other, and Scully reached up to her top button, deftly pushing it through the opening with her delicately manicured fingertips. She did not avert her eyes from Mulder’s as she worked her way down to her waist, finally letting the shirt hang open at the front. </p><p>She took his left hand once more and tucked it inside the front panel, his massive palm easily encompassing the entire fleshy mound there. He squeezed her hip gently, cupping her and pulling her towards him at once, guiding her between his knees. Checking her eyes for continued consent, he brushed the center of her shirt to one side and revealed half of her chest to his vision for the first time. </p><p>“Oh, Scully,” he said in a hushed voice, and - permission silently granted by Scully’s hungry gaze - lifted his mouth to her nipple and latched on, sucking, circling his tongue around her hot, pink bud. She moaned again and grabbed the back of his head, twisting her fingers into his hair, her nails scratching at his scalp.</p><p>His mouth broke contact with her delicately pale skin, and he pushed the satin from her shoulders, letting it whoosh to the floor.</p><p>He was gazing up at her again, and she leaned down to kiss him now, finally allowing herself to experience in the flesh that which she had longed for, imagined, fantasized about for some time. Their lips met; wet, fervent, ravenous. Their shared craving drew them together, suctioning them to one another at the mouth as though they could consume one another entirely, and meant to. His salted breath mingled with her own, and their tongues tangled and danced. He ran his hand up her naked back, and her breasts pressed against his collarbone.</p><p>He pulled away, and she held the side of his face tightly to her bare chest, breathless, eyes closed. </p><p>“Scully,” he ventured, “are you sure about this?” He looked up at her with his soft, beautiful, hazel eyes. She didn’t know what had possessed her for so long, being able to resist those eyes all these months.</p><p>She straightened up, and took his hand once again, reaching behind herself to slide it down the back of her waistband, over her rounded ass, and into the molten cleft of her body. She spread her thighs as his fingers found her desire, parting and probing her on their voyage of discovery. He dipped a single digit inside her body, and she exhaled on a low moan. </p><p>“I’m sure, Mulder,” she murmured, smiling again. “Take me to the moon and back.”</p><p>He relaxed a little, his shoulders dropping, “Oh is that the game?” he teased, “Space puns?”</p><p>She shrugged playfully.</p><p>He smiled wide at her, or she thought he did; it was hard to see with her eyelashes fluttering closed. Her head dropped back once more as he pumped into her, his thumb resting fortuitously against the base of her perineum, that dark, forbidden, blissful spot. She felt alive, animal, raw. She let her breath come out ragged, allowed her rasps and moans to escape unbridled. Mulder paused his efforts for a second or two, leaving two fingers curled inside her, using his free hand to yank down her pajama pants. She helped, kicking them loose from her ankles as he grabbed a handful of her ass with his spare hand and pulled her toward the bed, reclining face up on the mattress and encouraging her to crawl on her knees up to his shoulders and sit back. Only then did he remove his fingers from inside of her, and her body sucked at them as he did, protesting their departure.</p><p>Scully was giddy with want, and Mulder looked up at her just then with such veneration that her heart burst with renewed affection for him. She’d never been made to feel more worthy in her life. This was so Mulder. She had not specifically realized it before, but this was how he often made her feel, in his best moments. </p><p>At the insistence of his hand pressing gently on her lower back, his fingers sticky with her own yearning, she lowered her sex to his mouth. </p><p>As soon as his velvet tongue met her clit, she cried out, almost lifting herself up on her knees at the shock of it. He held her steady, lapping at her hardened bundle of nerves with the flat of his tongue, softly at first, then applying more and more pressure as she sunk further down onto him, his chin pressing up into her heat, her slick juices gliding her inner walls against his light stubble. Oh Jesus, it was divine, and she called out his last name as she rode his face, her breath hitching in her throat as her trajectory was set to climax.</p><p>Scully chanced a glance downwards and saw that he was watching her in her ecstasy. </p><p>She was wanted. She was valued. She was enough.</p><p>She smiled down at him, not halting her movements, and reached up to pinch her own nipples with her dainty, expert hands. Mulder groaned his pleasure into her body, sucking and licking and holding her down so she could not get away.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>,” she gasped, and was lost; her face lifted to the heavens, her body and mind spinning and soaring in concupiscent formation, her voice clamorously invoking two thirds of the Trinity with various, stertorous monikers as she rocketed into her own private orbit.</p><p>Mulder massaged her hips and kept his chin tilted up into her as she twitched and panted and called out for God, and she felt her inner muscles contracting around his way-past-five-o-clock shadow. The humid air of his heavy breath rushed from his nose, tickling her pubic mound as his lips remained clamped over the hood of her clitoris. She exhaled the last of her shudders and sat back on her haunches, resting on his solid pectorals, running her tongue over her lips, wetting them with exhausted delight. Mulder’s chin glistened in the dim room, drenched, and she laughed, reaching down to wipe him off. </p><p>He let her, but then caught her by the wrist and held her soaked palm against his mouth, kissing it, hard, and smearing the residue of her arousal all over his lips once again. He licked them clean, unblinking.</p><p>She buried her face in her other hand and laughed shyly. </p><p>Mulder chuckled along with her, resting his hands on her still-spread thighs, his thumbs dipping close to her parted labia. She bit her lower lip and looked him in the eye once again, unable to hide her happiness.</p><p>“Luckily, out here, no one can hear you scream,” he joked, a question in his eyes suggesting he was worried he might not get away with this, and she pushed him away teasingly but giggled as she climbed off the bed. She picked up her pajama pants from the floor.</p><p>“And where do you think you’re going?” Mulder asked her as she stood up.</p><p>“I’ll be right back,” Scully responded, flinging the bottoms over her shoulder and sauntering off to the bathroom, looking back at him to make sure he was getting a good look at her receding form. “Don’t move.”</p><p>She glanced down at the enormous bulge in his pants once again, and knew she needn’t worry. He wouldn’t be going anywhere with that thing.</p><p>She returned a few minutes later, now wearing the satin pants, and sporting a dark gleam in her eye as she crept across the carpet towards him. When she reached the bed, he leaned up on his elbows and reached for her to pull her onto the bed, but she shook her head. Instead, she reached for his belt buckle and deliberately undid it, sliding the leather through the metal loop before reaching for his fly. As she unzipped his pants, Mulder lifted his hips, and his erection bounced up, pushing the flaps of the zipper to either side, straining against his boxer briefs. This was one shuttle she wouldn’t mind watching blast off, and she was ready to fire up the booster rockets. </p><p>She helped him remove his pants, then tugged at the waistband of his underwear. He removed it and lay himself back down on the bed, looking almost anxious. </p><p>“Mulder,” she reassured him. “Relax; I want this. I want <em> you.</em>” She whispered the last part, lowering herself to kneel at the foot of the bed. </p><p>His manhood loomed large, worryingly large for such a petite person, but Scully had never met a challenge she didn’t want to face. And face it she did; this hard, quivering invitation to wantonness inches from her mouth. He smelled like the Mulder she had come to know, only stronger here; that musky, spicy pheromone blend that brought her to her knees - now, finally, literally - and she breathed him in with abandon. </p><p>She gripped him in her hand, taking his tip into her mouth, sweeping her tongue around the head of his cock as he exhaled forcefully. She slid her closed palm up and down the base of his shaft, letting her saliva drip down to lubricate her ministrations, then working him further into her jaws so that the top of his penis rubbed just against her soft palate. She bobbed her head against him. He filled her mouth easily, and she thought of all the times she’d surreptitiously stolen a glance at his lap. Her curiosity had been satisfied, and then some. He was every bit as big as she’d always suspected, and her small oral cavity made for a snug fit as she worked him into a frenzy on the bed.</p><p>He clutched at the covers and murmured her name, encouraging her efforts all the while. He slowed her at one point, just managing to explain through his moans that he wanted to enjoy it a little longer, but his thighs were soon flexing again and she accelerated her pumping with her fist, sucking a little harder, working the tip of her tongue against his popping veins. </p><p>Mulder reached out and grabbed at her shoulder, clumsily pushing her back. “T-minus... T-minus five seconds and… and counting…” he sputtered, and she risked another tongue swirl, another deep thrust towards her throat. </p><p>“Scully!” Mulder choked out, and she pulled her mouth away. She kept her hand in place and he wrapped his own around it, working his erection skillfully as he delivered his impressive payload over their ten conjoined fingers and down onto his stomach. A coy smirk plastered itself across Scully’s face as he collapsed back onto the bed.          </p><p>She raised herself from the floor, rolling her neck from side to side, and grabbed the box of tissues that was sitting on the nightstand. She held them out and sat on the mattress, one foot tucked under the opposite thigh, her breasts sitting proudly on her chest with the pert insouciance of youth. </p><p>Mulder cleaned himself up and aimed the balled up tissues at the wastebasket, missing. He sighed, but didn’t get up, so Scully laughingly dragged herself over and retrieved the errant missiles, dropping them into their intended target. She returned to the bed and lay herself down in the crook of Mulder’s arm. </p><p>He kissed her temple, a peck, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead, then lifted her chin with one finger so that he could plant a full kiss on her mouth. She breathed in the scent of herself on his lips, their musky scents intermingling on both their tongues. </p><p>“Wow Scully,” he smiled. “That was fun.”</p><p>She nodded, grinning herself. </p><p>“Although, it was a bit of a <em> close encounter</em>, if you know what I mean,” he said, and she buried her face in his shoulder and laughed, any residual worries she’d had about this changing the fundamental nature of their relationship flying away on her huffing breath and disappearing into the vacuum of the mattress. </p><p>Mulder lifted his head. “Oh god, it’s past two,” he announced. He must have been checking the display on the alarm clock. “You should get some sleep Scully; you gotta drive us down to the Space Center in the morning.”</p><p>“Hey, it’s your turn,” she whined, sitting up and pulling the covers back to climb beneath. Her pajama shirt lay forgotten on the floor. Tornadoes and fires be damned, she’d already had her ABSOLUTE EMERGENCY for the night. It was too hot for more clothes, especially with Mulder’s intense body heat so close. And she did intend to hold him close tonight. And other nights, if he wanted her. </p><p>“Talk about a waste of taxpayer’s money, Scully,” Mulder droned, sitting up and shaking himself alert. “The two of us sharing a motel room while another sits empty.”</p><p>“Oh,” Scully replied sleepily. “Believe me, I’m demanding a refund on my room.”</p><p>“Demanding a refund, Scully?” Mulder queried, now folding his pants and setting them on the chair by his suit jacket. “You weren’t happy with the level of service you just received?”</p><p>She squinted one eye open to look at him. “Mmm, you? You did good, Mulder. I’ll be sure to leave a generous tip for you at check out.” She patted the mattress next to her.</p><p>“I’ll be right there,” he assured her, disappearing off into the bathroom. </p><p>She was asleep before he even turned out the light.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Scully had witnessed Mulder ejaculating for the first time at the Spring Creek Mercury Motorlodge, but she genuinely worried she might see an impromptu repeat performance when they arrived at the Space Center the following morning. Walking to their meeting, they bantered for the benefit of their NASA escort, Mulder practically bouncing off the walls and once again bombarding her with facts and figures.</p><p>“You remember all that stuff?” she asked, wearily, suppressing a yawn.</p><p>“You never wanted to be an astronaut when you were a kid, Scully?”</p><p>“Guess I missed that phase,” she sighed, mouthing ‘adult diapers’ at him behind their guide’s back.</p><p>She couldn’t help but make fun of him for his adulation of Lt. Belt, either. “Didn’t you want to get his autograph?” she teased as they left the Space Shuttle Program Director’s office, and when Mulder caught up with her he tapped her lightly on the ass in retaliation.</p><p>At some point in the afternoon, Mulder slunk off and made some phone calls, and when they drove to their accommodation after the successful shuttle launch that evening, it wasn’t the motel Scully had booked but a ritzy hotel with bellhops and room service. They finally made it back there in the middle of the night, following the complications with the mission and Lt. Belt’s questionable press conference.</p><p>At the reception desk, Mulder retrieved two keys, but when he held one out to Scully and she grasped her forefinger and thumb around it, he didn’t let go. She looked up to meet his smoldering gaze.</p><p>“What’s the matter Houston; do we… <em> have a problem</em>?” She managed to keep a straight face, just about.</p><p>“What do you say we waste some more taxpayer’s money tonight, Scully?” he grinned, his voice hushed, seductive. “Maybe we can cross... the final frontier?”</p><p>She halfheartedly rolled her eyes at his pun, but her insides were already aflame. She drew her mouth into a tight, shy smile, and nodded her agreement.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I want everyone to know that I watched the Falcon 9 launch and managed to refrain myself from using the phrase ‘good orbital insertion’ in this fic. And that was a struggle.</p><p>THANK YOU for reading. I'd love for you to go above and beyond and leave me a note telling me what you thought.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Irresistible (Season Two)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Scully gets a little jumpy after her encounter with Donnie Pfaster.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm sorry, what’s that? This isn’t the angst exchange?</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They stood pressed against one another in the foyer of Donnie Pfaster’s mother’s house in Minneapolis, Mulder holding her head, a steadying hand on her upper back as she cried her terror and relief into his chest, finally letting go.</p><p>The handcut Swiss voile table runner Pfaster had used to gag her was still tied at the back of Scully’s neck as Mulder rested his lips against her bloodied, tangled hair and softly assured her things were all right.</p><p>They weren’t all right, they weren’t all right at all. They were so far from all right she didn’t know how to process it, and could only cling to him in her effort to remain upright, and present: to remain real, somehow.</p><p>A part of her was glad her father had not lived to hear about this. She couldn’t have faced telling him; couldn’t have met his eyes, knowing that he knew. She had broken his heart by veering from a career in medicine to work at the FBI, but she’d always felt certain in her conviction that she was still following the path he’d foreseen for her: to use her skills and her training to help those in need.</p><p>Yet here she was, entrusted to protect others from the predators of the world, and she just seemed to keep falling victim to them.</p><p>She had disappointed her father, and now she had failed herself.</p><p>She attempted to calm down with the technique Dr. Kosseff had outlined, closing her eyes and noting what her senses could detect in the room around her, rooting herself in her environment.</p><p>What she could hear: Pfaster being cuffed and read his Miranda rights; that was no help.</p><p>What she could smell: Mulder’s laundry detergent, the salty, sea-air tang of his deodorant, the earthen aroma beneath it that was all him. She sucked it in through her nose, filling her lungs with the scent of him between heaving sobs. That was better.</p><p>What she could feel: the full body press of his every contour against her aching, bruised form. The safe, scratchy cavern of his shoulder, where her stricken face was hidden from the gaze of the local field agents; his muscled arms, hesitantly encircling her; his ribs, crushing her breasts painfully as she clutched him tight; and his manhood, making lengthy, innocent contact with the soft swell of her stomach. That was… confusing at this time.</p><p>She took in a deep breath, the flow of her tears stemmed for now, and patted Mulder’s back in thanks, stepping away. He watched from a close, anxious distance as she untied the makeshift gag and ran her fingers through her hair, averting her eyes from any and all inquiries as to her health and wellbeing as she waved off medical attention.</p><p>“I’m fine. I just want to go to the motel,” she insisted, in a quiet voice.</p><p>Agent Bocks drove them back, Mulder silently riding up front, Scully pressing herself into the corner of the back seat against the door, her hands folded in her lap as she vehemently admonished any teardrops that dared to appear in the corners of her eyes. At a stoplight, the driver behind braked a little late, and she snapped her head back, bracing for an impact that never came.</p><p>A female agent had retrieved her bag from the trunk of her wrecked Lariat rental, and it awaited her in her room.</p><p>She turned on all the lights.</p><p>In the bathroom, Scully peeled off her dusty, bloodstained clothes and dropped them to the floor, hanging her red satin robe on the hook at the back of the door. She inspected herself in the mirror, fingering the abrasion on her chin, the contusion above her right eyebrow. There were angry stripes on her wrists and ankles from where they’d been roughly tied. There were too many cuts to count. Purpling weals were beginning to marble the pale skin of her hips, knees and arms. Her back too, probably: the raised welts a catalogue of every individual violent contact made with walls, stairs, floors. She felt each blow anew as her hands explored the injuries.</p><p>As she began to draw the bath, the sound of the cascading water sent her mind reeling to the image of Pfaster falling backwards into the tub. She saw him collapsing over and over until she wrenched off the faucet. The final few droplets fell from the chrome-plated plumbing, and as she looked down onto the settling surface she saw herself submerged below the waterline: lifeless, immersed in billowing scarlet seeping from severed veins.</p><p>She had to get back on this aqueous horse without delay. Baths were her respite, her lone sanctioned self-indulgence: scalding, frothy, synthetic-scented Elysium. Dana Scully did not shop ‘til she dropped. She rarely imbibed more than a lone glass of wine. She hadn’t smoked a single cigarette since completing her undergraduate thesis. She had been averting her eyes from lingering, suggestive gazes since Quantico. She would absolutely, resolutely, categorically not allow Donnie Pfaster to ruin baths for her.</p><p>She made sure her gun was within reach, resting atop the cistern.</p><p>Climbing into the bubbleless water, she laid back against the tub, her eyes wide open. She listened to the room. The faucet dripped every few seconds. The shaving light above the mirror buzzed. A clock mounted over the TV in the bedroom counted passing seconds. God knew what time it was. She risked a few long blinks.</p><p>Behind her eyelids, she saw white. A bright light. A gurney. Her own abdomen; distended, illuminated, invaded. Images so familiar, of which she could make no sense. It looked like a dream.</p><p>It felt like a nightmare.</p><p>Like the other nightmares that shocked her awake at all hours, gasping and sweating and reaching for her weapon on the nightstand: Eugene Tooms squeezing through her hallway air duct; Duane Barry silhouetted outside her bay window; darkness, and the insistent droning whir of helicopter blades.</p><p>She sank beneath the water to soak her hair.</p><p>She washed herself; then, when the temperature began to drop, dragged her body up and out of the bath, gingerly drying off, dabbing rather than rubbing at the sore spots, which were legion. The plughole gurgled as the last of the bathtub contents spiralled away, and she shrugged her robe over her shoulders, tucking her SIG-Sauer, still in its hip holster, into the pocket.</p><p>She walked towards the bed and was about to dig her pajamas out of the open suitcase when she heard the noise behind her. A rustle of some sort. A breath, or a shuffle, maybe. She grabbed for the gun as she spun around, unclipping the holster and flinging it away from her. Safety off, she held both her arms ramrod straight and aimed for the bathroom. Her heart pounded, the only noise she could now hear the thumping of her own blood in her ears. She didn’t wait around to see if there was something else she might be missing, but backed out of the room, sidestepping the bed. Once outside, she slammed the door shut with excessive force and screamed.</p><p>Long. Livid. Loud. Not a scream of fear, but of abject fury.</p><p>She knew there was no one in that room. She was simply on edge, her body reliving her panic, her mind re-experiencing her abduction. Abductions. She didn’t need to wait another few months to know these Pfaster flashbacks weren’t just going to disappear.</p><p>
  <em>Goddammit.</em>
</p><p>How would she ever escape this hell when it lived inside of her?</p><p>
  <em>A body has a story to tell.</em>
</p><p>Would her own body be telling her this same story for the rest of her life, returning to the beginning at every unexplained noise, every unexpected knock, every headlight in the rearview?</p><p>She screamed again, raging against the closed door, slamming her gun-toting fist into it.</p><p><em>Fuck.</em> Another bruise she’d have to nurse. And no one else to blame for this one.</p><p>“Scully?” came a quiet voice from her left. Mulder was standing outside his open motel room door, clad only in T-shirt and boxers, holding a toothbrush in his right hand. A curtain twitched across the courtyard.</p><p>“I locked myself out,” she said, just now realizing it was true, and huffing the statement through gritted teeth, as though it were the worst thing to happen to her that day. She brought her left fist to the door and thumped the side of it into the flimsy but unyielding wood for emphasis, and because she was still indescribably irritated by her overreaction.</p><p>Mulder stepped away from his door, making room for her to pass. “Scully, get in here,” he said, sounding annoyed. She glared at him, but let her shoulders drop in defeat, and obeyed.</p><p>Inside his room, she put the safety back on her handgun and left the weapon sitting on a chair. She stalked over to the empty desk and stared at herself in the mirror. The only light came from a bedside lamp.</p><p>“Are you okay?” Mulder asked, closing the door and audibly locking it.</p><p>She caught his gaze in the reflection and rolled her eyes. “Mulder, I’m-”</p><p>“Fine, yeah, I know. I thought that’s probably why you were pistol whipping your motel room door in the middle of the night. Because you were fine.” His face was stony.</p><p>She scoffed at him, pushing out her chin in vexation.</p><p>He walked towards her, dropping the toothbrush onto a small table, posture and voice both softening. “Talk to me, Scully. You can trust me. Don’t you know by now that you can trust me?”</p><p>“I don’t want to talk,” she said, looking down at her knuckles, regarding her fingers spread out on the table top. Fingers that Donnie Pfaster had wanted to disarticulate with rusted gardening shears and keep in his freezer next to his peas and carrots. She balled her hands into tight fists, and pressed her lips together, hard.</p><p>“What <em>do</em> you want, then, Scully?” he asked, his eyes searching hers in the mirror.</p><p>She studied her reflection. Wet hair and red robe. This wasn’t the first time she’d stood before him in a motel room like this. She thought about what she’d wanted, even then.</p><p>She didn't want to be paralyzed by fear anymore. She didn’t want to have to be protected. She wanted to protect herself. She wanted to rid herself of the traumas that resided within her body. She wanted to be her own kind of Persephone: ride into the underworld of her own volition, driving her own chariot, and emerge triumphant.</p><p>She wanted to rewrite this story, to start it when she chose to, take it where she liked, control it and end it; end it for good.</p><p>Mulder was behind her. He was right behind her, only inches from her skin, which was bare beneath the flimsy robe.</p><p>“I want you to touch me, Mulder,” she stated, loud and clear, holding his gaze.</p><p>He tenderly reached out and rested his palm on her shoulder, his eyes worried. Kind.</p><p>That wouldn’t do at all.</p><p>“No,” she said, still staring at him in the reflection. “I want you to-“</p><p>
  <em>Like he did.</em>
</p><p>“I want you to grab me.”</p><p>A look of horror washed over Mulder’s features.</p><p>“No,” he said, aghast. He withdrew his hand, rubbing it over his rough stubble.</p><p>“Mulder,” she said, low and deliberate, shifting her hips so that the scarlet satin of the robe grazed over the curves of her ass, pushing out her chest so that her nipples brushed the fabric, visibly rippling the front of the garment. “I need this.”</p><p>She watched him watch her in the mirror, his pupils enlarged in the gloom. He razed his eyes over the hills and valleys of her figure, then looked away.</p><p>“Scully,” he pleaded.</p><p>“You said you could always use my help, Mulder. Now I’m asking you for yours.” She steadied herself against the desk with her hands once again. “I need to do this, on my own terms. If I need to find someone else, I’m sure I can. But Mulder,” she paused, making sure he met her gaze in the mirror once again. “You’re the only one I trust.”</p><p>Mulder stood, motionless. “I’m not certain what you’re asking of me, Scully,” he murmured.</p><p>Scully let her tense muscles ease a little. “Come here,” she instructed, softly, turning around to face him. She reached out her hand, and he took it.</p><p>Scully sat herself on the edge of the desk, her knees spread. The fabric of the robe draped over her inner thighs. A minute shift one way or the other would expose her to him completely. She pulled him towards her, tugging him close until his face was directly opposite her own, their fingers entwined, resting on her knee.</p><p>She kissed him. His lips were soft, his cheeks scratchy, and he didn’t stop her, but he didn’t give himself to her fully, either. She pulled away.</p><p>“What’s the matter, Mulder?”</p><p>“Scully,” he whispered. “I don’t - you’re not yourself.”</p><p>She sighed, taking his face in her palms. She realized she was shaking. She levelled her gaze with his. “Mulder,” she began. “That man, his crimes, I’ve never felt anything like this. I need you to bring me back to myself.” She moved her hands, resting them on his shoulders. “I want to feel human again.” She searched his eyes, silently reassuring him this was okay. “That’s what I’m asking, Mulder. Stop looking at me like that, and show me that I’m more than just his victim.”</p><p>Mulder blinked, long and hard, and this time, he kissed her. Not gently, not tenderly, but with purpose, intent. He opened his mouth to hers, and she rolled her tongue against his, powerfully, without fear or shame.</p><p>She tucked her arms beneath his, reaching up with one hand and pushing her fingers into the base of his hairline. With the other, she tugged on the fabric of his shirt at his lower back, feathering the pads of her fingertips against the skin that emerged beneath. They were still kissing, hard, and Mulder took hold of her firmly around the ribs. She gasped, half in pleasure and half in pain, as the heel of his hand dug into one of the bruises she’d examined in the bathroom earlier.</p><p>He immediately broke off their kiss, pulling back to gauge her reaction.</p><p>“Don’t stop,” she panted. “That means I like it.”</p><p>He resumed his kissing, but this time against the side of her neck, one hand falling to her left hip, the other trailing up to cover her breast through the robe. A shock of desire ran through her body right to her core, the first she’d felt tonight. This had been mechanical before; a means to an end. She’d had herself half convinced this carnal, obliterative odyssey could be undertaken with just about anyone. It was only now she remembered how much - how often - she wanted this man, specifically.</p><p>She turned her face towards his, compelling his lips to return to her own. He complied, his breath sweet and sharp from the recent brushing, and she willingly swallowed his pomegranate kisses, hoping she could return to them in better times: harvest the unmarred fruit of their evident mutual attraction, so ripe with possibility. Not this sour, infested imitation, spoiled, and rotting from within.</p><p>She tried not to think about the differences between this encounter and the tender romance she’d previously imagined when daring to envision their sexual union. It would still be him. His body, inside hers. Carrying her away from herself, dragging her beneath the earth with the frantic merging of hot, sticky flesh, freeing her, and making her anew.</p><p>She fumbled at the rear waistband of his boxers and delved her flat palms inside, grabbing hard fistfuls of his smooth cheeks, pulling him towards her. She inched forwards on the desk, her robe parting beneath the tie at her waist and falling away at the crease of her thighs. His sex rubbed against her own through the cotton of his underwear, and she tilted her hips to gain purchase, to feel the full, swelling effect of his desire against hers.</p><p>Mulder clamped his lips down more insistently upon hers, his hands pushing into her wet hair, thumbing her earlobes, pulling her jaw up towards him. His chest pressed against her breasts, and she lifted his T-shirt at the hem. They broke contact only so that he could pull it off over his head.</p><p>When he returned his mouth to hers, Scully shoved her hand down the front of his underwear and wrapped it around his now fully hard cock. She ran her thumb over the already oozing tip, and Mulder jumped in her grasp, moaning into her mouth.</p><p>She tore her face from his, breathless. She held him in her palm, pulsating granite.</p><p>“Protection?” she asked, and he reluctantly extricated himself from her grasp, walking over to the nightstand and opening his wallet.</p><p>After a few seconds he held up the square plastic packet, a look of immense relief on his face. “Thank god,” he grinned, and she returned the sentiment with a smile of her own.</p><p>He walked back towards her, slow and steady, his gaze assured. Arriving at the space between her knees again, he pushed his boxers down his legs and discarded them to one side. Scully took a long look at him now. Good god, he was enormous. This was going to be perfect.</p><p>He tore open the wrapper and rolled the condom down onto himself using both hands, then reached to untie the knot at Scully’s waist. She stopped him, shaking her head. “Like this,” she said, pushing the robe open even wider over her thighs so that Mulder could get his own unobstructed view. She reached for his hand once again, and deliberately maneuvered it between her legs, where he ran two fingers between her drenched labia.</p><p>She turned her mouth to murmur into his ear. “I’m ready, Mulder,” she instructed, and pulled him forward by the waist.</p><p>She heard him grunt as his sheathed tip bumped against her upper leg, and she spread her knees even further to give him better access. She felt him reach down between their bodies to guide himself into her, and steeled herself for the pain.</p><p>She wanted the pain.</p><p>It had been a while for her, almost three years since she’d been penetrated by anything larger than a tampon or her own two forefingers, and Mulder’s girth was considerable. He stretched her inner muscles inch by glorious inch as he eased himself into her body. Her breath caught at the back of her throat as she tried to relax herself around him. He took it easy, but she wished he wouldn’t.</p><p>“More Mulder,” she pleaded, “I can take it.”</p><p>He grasped her by the hips, and she leaned her head back into the mirror, looking down to see him pull himself out of her a fraction before driving back in, slowly, all the way to the hilt. She felt the soft, peach-fuzz pressure of his balls against her body, and the ache in her center deepened.</p><p>“That’s good Mulder,” she encouraged. “That feels good. Now, hard. I want it hard.”</p><p>His head shot up to question her; he opened his mouth to argue.</p><p>“I said hard,” she demanded, grabbing for his ass to guide him as deep as he could go. “Please.”</p><p>He seemed to relent now, because he began to pump into her, forcefully. He placed one hand against the mirror for support, and held the small of her back with the other. She crossed her ankles behind him and relished the feel of him creating new bruises, her shoulder blades pressing sharply into the glass.</p><p>Mulder was working hard, building up a sweat, and she kissed his forearm where it swept up past her face, biting his briny flesh between her teeth in her sweet agony. “More,” she said, scraping her nails across his flexing glutes. “Faster.”</p><p>Mulder’s jaw set with anger, or determination, she didn’t know which, but either way he increased his efforts, and her thighs burned where she held them up, her sex ached and clenched around him, and her head slammed into the mirror over and over. Yes, this was good.</p><p>Mulder, in an effort to shield her, moved his mirror hand behind her crown, cushioning the blows. No, no, that wasn’t what she was after: a lessening of the punishment.</p><p>Another thrust, and her hair caught between his fingers, a shock of pain tugging at her temple. Well now, this could work.</p><p>“Mulder,” she panted, desperate now. She was close, so close to the relief she sought. “Pull my hair.”</p><p>He closed his eyes as he continued to fuck her, not willing to engage on this one.</p><p>“Dammit Mulder, I said pull it,” she insisted, digging her nails into the muscles of his rear, hard.</p><p>He reacted to the tearing of his flesh with a moan and a vicious thrust, clenching the damp strands in his hand and boring his now open eyes into hers. She looked up at him, her mouth agape, a single teardrop falling down one cheek and into her ear. He gripped tighter, pounding her harder, and she nodded.</p><p>“Yes Mulder,” she said. “Yes. Yes.”</p><p>His cock was driving into her, Charon’s oar plunging into the River Styx and stirring up the forbidden pleasures of her Catholic girlhood. He collided with her G-spot again and again, and she arched into him, pressing her clit into his abdomen as he grasped her hair and steadied her hip and stared her down, willing her to those dark shores. As soon as she began to climax, shaking and swearing and tilting her head back into his fist, Mulder came as well, his thighs tensing as he lifted her off the desk and gave her everything he had for the final few thrusts.</p><p>They were still afterwards, Mulder breathing heavily into the space between her ear and shoulder. After a while, he leaned backwards, sliding himself out of her and looking her in the eyes once again. Wordlessly, he reached for the knotted belt of the robe, and this time Scully allowed him. He loosened it, pulling the slick tie open, letting the garment fall open at her center. Scully swallowed hard.</p><p>He traced the lines of the robe down over her cleavage, and softly nudged the material apart, revealing her naked skin in a widening swath. The satin fell from her shoulders and down her arms, and she was fully visible to him now, her mottled skin marked at front and back, the bruises already several shades darker than they had been less than an hour ago in the mirror. They were coming out nicely now.</p><p>Mulder dragged his eyes from injury to injury, his eyes reflecting the pain as though they were his own. He reached out to touch the discoloration on her ribs, where he had first grabbed her, but pulled away.</p><p>“Scully,” he rasped, and hung his head.</p><p>She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering her strength.</p><p>She dipped her head, seeking his gaze, and gently placed two fingers beneath his chin. She lifted his face until his eyes met her own, and watched as the tears began streaming down his cheeks.</p><p>She opened her arms, and he stepped forward, his chest hair rubbing against her naked torso, his wet face tucking into her warm neck.</p><p>He shook with grief, and Scully steadied him with a hand on his lower back, delving her free hand into his hair once more. She kissed the side of his head.</p><p>“It’s all right, Mulder,” she whispered. “It’s all right.”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>They eventually made it to Mulder’s bed for a few hours before their flight home, and reached an uneasy truce, her wrapped up in the robe once more, him spooning her, both of them sleeping fitfully. She heard a few unidentified noises, but didn’t reach for her gun. On the way to the airport, Mulder drove, and she watched the faces of other drivers in the rearview, but kept her panic at bay.</p><p>Waiting at a red light, Mulder broke the heavy silence.</p><p>“You know, last night-“ He cleared his throat. “Last night, I thought you called me Pfaster.”</p><p>She frowned at him.</p><p>“Near the end,” he clarified. “You said: ‘More, Pfaster.’ I thought.”</p><p>“Oh my god,” she said, horrified. “I said ‘Faster’, with an F.”</p><p>“Well, that’s what I figured. Hoped.” he nodded.</p><p>“Mulder,” she said. “You thought I called you Pfaster, and you kept going?” She was incredulous.</p><p>Mulder shrugged, looking ahead at the traffic. “You seemed like you needed to work through something.”</p><p>She gulped, tears forming. He was entirely too good for her.</p><p>
  <em>Pfaster.</em>
</p><p>She closed her eyes.</p><p>Her mind wandered to another of her tormentors: Luther Lee Boggs. She’d told him to his face she’d be happy to throw the switch and gas him out of this life for good if Mulder died as a consequence of Boggs’ actions. And she’d meant it.</p><p>Donnie Pfaster was evil, pure evil, she was sure of it, but she knew she was fully capable of being monstrous too. She lay her palm across her weapon, nestled at her right hip, and imagined a different end to her stair-fall with Pfaster the night before. A few seconds more, and she might have been able to grab the gun and end it all, blast him directly between the eyes and send him straight back to hell, where he belonged.</p><p>But then how would she be any different to him? What destination would be awaiting her at the end of her days?</p><p>She suspected it would help her nightmares in one way if she knew he were dead, if she asserted control over that herself, but that it would exacerbate them in another.</p><p>She’d probably been wrong to make use of sweet, tender Mulder to try and exorcise her demons last night. Great as it had felt, she suspected she wasn’t out of the underworld just yet.</p><p>As they pulled into the Lindbergh terminal Lariat parking lot, returning to her most recent traumatic beginning, she reached out and gently squeezed Mulder’s knee. He placed his hand over her own, looking over to smile, gently.</p><p>He saw the good in her; he always had.</p><p>Maybe she could let him be her savior, follow his light and climb back out of Hades’ realm, reclaiming her faith in herself.</p><p>As Pfaster’s only living victim, she was going to have to be a witness. Perhaps this was her true opportunity to rewrite the story. Her own story.</p><p>She would argue for leniency. She would ask the judge for life.</p><p>She was going to change the ending, after all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>You're an angel for reading this. The Devil makes work for non-commenting hands.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Teso Dos Bichos (Season Three)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Both Mulder and Scully are more affected by their encounter with Robert Modell than they've let on.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It's not my fault the cat episode is directly after Pusher, okay? </p><p>Please send cookies; I had to watch Teso Dos Bichos to write this. Twice. </p><p>I will award one point for every cat pun you can spot.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Scully had been awake for more than forty hours. </p><p>It hadn’t been a good forty hours either. The last two days had careened from bad (partial rat body parts littering the car engine of a suspected murder victim) to worse (bloodied entrails dripping from bare tree branches onto Mulder’s oblivious face) to so appalling they competed with only a few choice cases for worst X-File ever (getting mauled in the face by a domestic short hair while negotiating the labyrinthine tunnels beneath the Boston Museum of Natural History). </p><p>By the time she and Dr. Winters had finished the autopsies on Doctors Horning, Bilac and Lewton, as well as Mona Wustner (conclusion: animal attacks), she’d lost all track of time, and certainly all count of the number of coffees she’d consumed in an attempt to keep her wits about her after an entire night with no sleep. </p><p>Killer cats? <em> Sure, fine, whatever. </em> She was too exhausted - and too not Mulder - to even attempt to raise his amaru curse theory with the coroner. She downed one last cupful of caffeine for the drive back to the motel then lifted her weary limbs out of her aquamarine scrubs and back into her trusty gray short-sleeved ribbed sweater and by now slightly limp black suit, draping her purple overcoat over her forearm instead of donning it. It would be better to be a little cold; it would keep her more alert for the journey. She cracked the window and cranked the heating down to the lowest setting she could tolerate on this late-winter north-eastern evening. </p><p>Pulling out of the morgue’s underground parking structure, she called Mulder to give him the rundown of their postmortem findings, and to make sure she remained awake. She probably should have called a cab; her brother had cautioned her more than once that her pride would get her killed one day. What a waste to fight tooth and nail for truth and justice, to return from the brink of death after her mysterious disappearance, to achieve the Pyrrhic victory of avoiding the assassin’s bullet meant for her brain, only to flip over into a ditch through plain old fatigue. </p><p>She rolled her shoulders and bounced her left knee, turning the heat down another notch. She guided the car steadfastly to the right of the centerline, closed one eye then the other for momentary reprieve, sighed with relief as she pulled into the motel parking lot and shut off the engine, wishing Mulder goodnight and hanging up with a satisfying beep.</p><p>She stumbled into the room with her eyes half closed already, leaning down to loosen the laces on her utility boots before toeing them off as she walked, making a beeline for the bed. She flopped backwards onto the comforter, intending to rest for a moment, but her eyes flickered shut and she drifted off unawares. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Dank, dark, echo-filled. Flashlight beams zigzagging off metal walls, the hemoglobin tang of which she can taste in her mouth. A snarling tangle of tabbies and tortoiseshells pursuing the two of them along corridors, dropping down through open vents and scratching viciously at the feeble barrier of an ancient wooden door. Dr. Bilac’s body blocking the only route of escape. Stuck. Turning to face the meowing horde as it descends on her and Mulder, miniature canines sinking into their flesh like a thousand shamanic cuts.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> She stands to run and finds herself alone in an abandoned hospital corridor, her reflection staring back at her from the polished, squeaking floors. She inches forward with growing trepidation, readjusting the Kevlar pinching at her waist, too-swiftly reaching the entrance to room 128. The room she has been entering over and over for weeks on end.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The unwitting unconscious participant in the scene lies in a bed to the right, Mulder and Modell sit at the table to the left, enacting the tableau she’s feared since her ever-reckless partner donned the ‘Eyes and Ears’ kit in the mobile surveillance unit outside. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> ‘It’s designed for bomb disposal work to keep only one officer at risk.’ </em>
</p><p><em> She’d felt nauseated. Didn’t everyone know that only one of them dying was actually the </em> worst <em> case scenario? She wished neither of them ever had to risk their necks, but if this particular one of them had to, she’d always rather be right alongside him.  </em></p><p>
  <em> Modell talks Mulder into pointing the gun across the table and pulling the trigger. She balks. But nothing happens. No flesh is punctured, no spark ignites the pure oxygen in the canisters by the bed: no bullet in that chamber. She watches in horror as Mulder lifts the barrel to his temple without hesitation. His finger squeezes, and the world goes into slow motion as the bullet sails out of the pistol and through his skull, exiting above his left eye, leaving a volcanic crater that erupts blood and bone and gray matter onto the ceiling, walls, and floor. Onto the underside of her uplifted arms as she shields her face and roars her pain, falling, screaming, to the ground. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Scully jerked awake, her heartbeat pounding in her alternately flushed and arctic chest. She sat up on the edge of the bed and collected herself, rubbing at her sweat-moistened face. She checked her watch: one seventeen a.m. She patted her torso. Still dressed. Her mouth tasted atrocious. She must have passed out before getting ready for bed. </p><p>Her bladder was full to bursting; the inevitable after-effect of her overzealous caffeination. She fumbled with buttons and zippers and stepped out of her pants on her way to the bathroom, flinging her suit jacket onto a nearby table, littering the room with rumpled attire. She almost tripped on what might have been one of her boots as she struggled to pull the sweater over her head, finally managing to extract her elbow and shake the top to the ground behind her as she grabbed for the bathroom door handle and yanked it open. <em> God, it’s cold in here</em>, she thought, as the door clunked shut behind her. She tucked her fingers into the waistband of her underwear and opened her eyes to locate the toilet.</p><p>
  <em> Oh, shit. No, no, no, no, no.  </em>
</p><p>She whirled around and hammered at what she now realised was the front door to her motel room. The <em> outside </em> of the front door. Firmly locked shut. </p><p>She clawed at the handle in desperation, twisting it uselessly as she clenched her Kegels and cast her gaze about her, checking for any witnesses. No one was about, thank god. She now sported only her underwear, her investigate-the-missing-archaeologist-underwear; not even a matching set, she thought, laughably, as though being trapped outside her motel room in her bra and panties would be somehow more acceptable in <em> coordinated </em> undergarments. </p><p>She remembered she’d left her overcoat in the car, and was briefly and euphorically buoyed by the idea of grabbing it to preserve her modesty, before recalling that she didn’t have any keys on her; if she did, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. She had two options here: wake up the proprietor in her underwear or wake up Mulder in her underwear. She was caught between a rock and a hard place. Dashing herself against either lithic precipice did not appeal, but needs must. </p><p>She did the best impression of herself she could muster in her current state of undress, and mulled it over rationally. One of these options had already seen her half naked. He’d handled it like a gentleman then; she knew she could trust him to do it again now. Also, he was currently in possession of a bathroom, and she was about to make a puddle on the floor if she didn’t get access to one. </p><p>She padded swiftly along the bare cement to Mulder’s door.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>* * *</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em> Scully runs a feline gauntlet towards him, advancing along the seemingly endless corridor foot by interminable foot. Every few steps, she is thrown off balance by a squalling creature flying at her face from a novel direction. He watches helplessly while she wrenches each furry attacker from her tattered skin, hurling them behind her as she approaches the barrel of his raised pistol.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Sweat beads on his forehead and cheeks, pooling at the small of his back beneath his white undershirt.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Scully looks at him with wounded disbelief as his forefinger teases the trigger. She is still approaching him, the cats now vanished, her ivory visage inexplicably pristine. “Mulder,” she whispers, “you don’t have to do this.” Tears form on her lower lids, and she stops, finally halting her feet and simply looking at him.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Scully, run!” he warns her, as Modell grins at him, thumping the tabletop and urging him on. But she just stands there, staring, tears starting to spill down her cheeks. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Mulder,” she pleads again, and he fires.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The bullet pierces the base of her neck just above her vest; a pointless piece of armour, he despairs, if it leaves the cranium and jugular so exposed. The boom of the gunshot ricochets off the walls and pounds at his eardrums several times. Her eyes go wide and she grabs at her throat in horror, never breaking eye contact as she collapses, gurgling, to her knees. Crimson lifeforce pulses through her dainty fingers as he hears another bullet leave the chamber, and she opens her mouth to speak once again. The word leaves her lips at a strangely loud volume for a death rattle. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “MULDERRR!!!”  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Further shots stutter out in the distance. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He looks into Scully’s unrelenting gaze as she finally drops to the linoleum.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Mulder gasped himself awake, perspiring like he was still back at Fairfax Mercy. He pinched his brows laterally with one hand, reaching over to the nightstand for his glass of water, and heard a pounding at his door.</p><p>“Mulder!” Scully’s inimitable hiss came from the other side of the wall. She knocked again, sounding frantic. “Mulder, wake up and let me in! <em> Please</em>!”</p><p>He turned on the bedside lamp as he launched himself out of bed, throwing back the covers and leaping across the threadbare carpet in his underwear, heading in the direction of her voice and continued hammering, and pulled open the door.</p><p>He was met with the sight of Scully on the concrete walkway. Rather a lot of Scully. Scully in white briefs and a light pink, underwired bra, plain but for a satin ribbon rosebud nestled deep in her cleavage. Her considerable cleavage, as shaped by this heroic garment, he thought. He barely had time to register this surprising turn of events before she flew past him, her thighs pressed oddly together as she walked, heading directly for the bathroom. </p><p>“Don’t look at me, Mulder!” she chastised, hurtling across the room. </p><p>“Scully, what-” he began to query, but she interrupted him before disappearing through the open doorway.</p><p>“Grab me a shirt!” she growled, “I need to use the bathroom.” The door slammed shut behind her.</p><p>Mulder played with his lower lip, twirling it between thumb and forefinger, and startled. He’d remembered the copy of Hanky Panky he’d left sitting atop the tank. Well, how was he to know he’d have company tonight?</p><p>He heard the toilet seat clatter down and, after an interval, a flush, followed by the faucet running. He rooted around in his duffel bag, seeking a spare, clean T-shirt as per Scully’s instructions, and stood awkwardly by the side of the bed in his boxer briefs as he awaited her return.</p><p>She soon opened the door with a sigh, drying her palms on a fresh hand towel. She raised an eyebrow at him. “Reading girlie magazines on the can? Nice, Mulder.” </p><p>He held onto the shirt. </p><p>She finished with the towel and remained in the doorway, holding the terry cotton rectangle to her stomach. She looked up at the ceiling, shaking her head, and he took the brief opportunity to appraise her figure. He knew he shouldn’t, but she was standing right in front of him with more skin than clothing on display, and her curves and bones undulated and jutted so appealingly he couldn’t tear his eyes from her gently leaning form, propped as it was so improbably on his motel bathroom door jamb at one thirty in the morning. </p><p>She huffed out a breath, her chin pushed to the side, her eyes locked on the stipple. “I keep having this dream, Mulder,” she announced, apparently not about to address her noisy and insistent arrival, apropos of nothing, at his door in her underwear in the small hours. “Since Modell.”</p><p>“Uh huh?” he answered, vaguely, roaming his gaze over the delicate skin and rolling muscles of her upper thighs before snapping his eyeline up to meet hers as she tilted her chin down from the ceiling. </p><p>“You aim the gun at your temple and pull the trigger, just like you did, only the gun goes off... and you die.” Her voice jumped an octave on the last three words, a piccolo flute floating on a whisper.</p><p>Next, she looked at the floor, her head tilting towards the door frame.</p><p>He didn’t tell her about his recurring nightmare of shooting her. Instead, he mumbled at her while taking in the dip and swell of her waist as it dropped down to her left hip, pushed out to one side. She rested one bare foot atop the other, absentmindedly rubbing one arch against the knuckles of her opposite toes. There was something so unguarded about her posture, something he would have found endearing and appealing even if she were wearing a hazmat suit. As it was, with her gracing his sleeping quarters in an as yet unexplained state of semi-nudity in the middle of the night, his body had started to respond in an inappropriate, if predictable manner.</p><p>“I thought you didn’t want to let him take up another minute of our time, Scully?” he said, shifting the so far unproffered T-shirt in front of his groin.</p><p>She looked up at him then, her doe eyes watery and wide, and folded her arms across her middle, squeezing her breasts together as she gripped opposing elbows for comfort. “It was a one in five chance, Mulder, after you aimed at Modell. You could easily have killed yourself. Without a moment’s hesitation.”</p><p>He hung his head in shame, for the ease with which Modell had subdued his free will over his own mortality, and for the growing problem in his underwear that Scully’s little self-hug had exacerbated.</p><p>“I couldn’t resist him, Scully. I tried, but I wasn’t strong enough.”</p><p>“You didn’t shoot me,” she countered, her voice pure susurration now.</p><p>He nodded, holding her gaze. Her dainty face was so open, almost entirely make-up free, with the exception of a few smears of eyeliner around one eye, and the remnants of two-day-old mascara clinging to a few lashes.</p><p>“It was easier,” he murmured, “to fight harder. For you.”</p><p>She scoffed, lifting her hands to her hips, the towel hanging over one thigh, the new stance offering him an unobstructed view of her taut stomach, the intimate sight of her belly-button punctuating her torso, and his erection twitched beneath its makeshift shield.</p><p>“Why?” she pressed, with some disdain. “Because I’m a woman?!”</p><p>“No!” he insisted. “Not at all.”</p><p>She looked down at herself and seemed to only now recall her sartorial condition. Or lack thereof. She tutted and reached out, gesturing for him to toss the shirt.</p><p>He stalled for time, frowning at her as though he didn’t understand; as if they didn’t have four years of honing their unspoken communication under their belts.   </p><p>“Mulder,” she said, irked by his apparent obtuseness. “Give me the shirt.” She looked at him like he was crazy. Like she wasn’t the one who had burst in here half naked, demanding items of clothing and access to the facilities.</p><p>“What happened to you?” he asked, reluctantly throwing the bundle of distressed white cotton in her direction and turning to perch on the end of the bed in an attempt to hide his own indiscretion. With great relief, he surmised from her complete lack of reaction that she hadn’t seen it. He averted his gaze as she turned away from him to tug the T-shirt over her head. Too little, too late, <em> Fox</em>, he thought, ruefully.</p><p>“I locked myself out,” she stated, matter of factly.</p><p>“In the middle of the night? In your underwear?”</p><p>She rolled her eyes, although whether at him or herself, he couldn’t tell. </p><p>“I was half asleep, I got disoriented and opened the wrong door. And I drank so much coffee yesterday; I woke up having to pee so bad, and ended up outside. It would have been a complete disaster if you hadn’t woken up, <em> finally</em>.” She placed great emphasis on the last word and eyed him with playful annoyance.</p><p>“You surprise me, Scully. Your sleepwear choices are usually a little more formal,” he grinned, risking a look back at her now that she was safely ensconced in his borrowed shirt. It fell just beyond the tops of her thighs, resting on her right leg just where her smooth muscles gave way to soft, rounded flesh.</p><p>Her lips tightened into an almost smile. “Yes, well, I didn’t quite make it that far. I pretty much passed out as soon as I got back. I haven’t brushed my teeth or washed my face or anything.”</p><p>“Oh, try the top drawer,” he said, indicating behind her into the bathroom with a nod. “I think I saw some complimentary travel toothbrushes in there next to the soaps and shampoos.” </p><p>She disappeared into the tiled anteroom for a moment and he heard the sound of little-used wheels rolling along rusted runners.</p><p>“Mulder, my hero,” she called out, and he heard a warmth in her voice that didn’t do much to alleviate the situation in his shorts. Listening to the sounds of her nightly ritual, he tried to think of something that would make it go away, but was always terrified to venture into any surefire turn-off territory lest he found himself in the horrific scenario of picturing his mother while sporting a raging hard on. He settled on mentally listing the groceries he’d try to remember to pick up when he arrived home in Alexandria. It worked, thankfully, and he could safely shift to the top of the bed and lie back against the pillows by the time she returned, her smeared eyeliner now completely wiped away.</p><p>“So,” he ventured, his fingers interlaced over his bare stomach, one thumb playing with a swirl of hair just above his waistband, “Do you want me to throw something on and run over to reception to find the owner? Get someone to let you back into your room?”</p><p>She sighed. “You could, I guess. It’s just so late. I’d hate to bother anyone. And I’m still not really presentable.” She looked down at herself, four fifths of her bare legs still on display.</p><p>“I can lend you some pants,” he offered. “You’ll look like Charlie Chaplin. Very fetching.”</p><p>She smiled properly now, laughing lazily through her nose. “I’m so tired, Mulder,” she whined goodnaturedly. “Can I just crash here? You already saw me in my underwear; it can’t get any worse.”</p><p>Mulder silently questioned her word choice. He was no writer, but he was pretty sure the term he would have used was ‘better’. </p><p>“Sure,” he agreed, lifting the covers back and patting the side of the bed he wasn’t occupying. He fluffed the pillow for her and curled over onto his side to face her as she clambered in, demurely keeping her knees pressed together as she slid them beneath the comforter. She turned to face him too, tucking one hand beneath her cheek and using the other to encircle her wrist. She blinked across at him. He took in the claw marks on her face, including a couple of particularly bad ones that had been disinfected and covered with band-aids by a paramedic, despite Scully’s insulted protestations. She’d removed the bandages now, and he could see the cuts were beginning to heal over nicely.</p><p>“So why was it easier?” she murmured, her feet rubbing together absently beneath the sheets.</p><p>“Hmm?” He’d forgotten what they were talking about.</p><p>“With Modell. You said it was easier to resist shooting me.” The particular blue of her eyes always reminded him of his childhood marble collection at this close range: the elegant swoops inside delicate and beautiful, untouchable.</p><p>He swallowed, nodding, biding his time. “Well,” he said softly. “It wasn’t because you’re a woman.”</p><p>She made a subtle shrugging motion, mostly with her lips; a halfhearted defense of her earlier assertion.</p><p>His toes reached out across the cool expanse of linen that separated their feet, and he touched them to her nearest sole, stopping her fidgeting. “It was because it was you.”</p><p>She moved her other foot so that she had his toes trapped between her own, and they gripped one another like jungle primates. She held his gaze for a moment then curled her toes even tighter around his as she closed her eyes and whispered, “I could have lost you, Mulder; so easily. Too easily.”</p><p>He covered her hand with his own, his fingers easily encompassing her fist as well as the wrist they were wrapped around. </p><p>“But you didn’t,” he stated, and rubbed her knuckles with one thumb.</p><p>Her only answer was a chaste kiss on his little finger, the closest one to her mouth. She pressed her lips to a phalanx or two and held them there, her eyes clamped shut.</p><p>“I know you probably think I shouldn’t have gone into the hospital at all,” he continued, and she opened her eyes and lessened the pressure of her affection, but her lips remained a hair’s breadth from his finger, the warm air from her nostrils tickling and warming his skin. “But I can’t sit back and let others take the risk if I’m the guy who could make all the difference. Someone like Modell, most people just won’t listen to him. I really thought I could talk him down. I’m sorry.”</p><p>A subtle darkness clouded her expression, and he wondered if she, like him, was thinking of Duane Barry. “No, Mulder,” she said, disentangling her thumb from his grip and braiding it over his own. She held his eyeline without blinking, her voice hushed. “It’s okay, I understand. I know that’s just who you are. Your stubbornness; it’s why I-” she stopped herself there, her eyes flitting over his face. “I really admire that about you.”</p><p>He went to pull his foot back to his own side of the bed, but she tightened the grip of her toes and held him in place. He darted her a look of surprise, but acquiesced, relaxing his heel back into position. Scully continued to stare at him, and he was waiting for her to say something else when he felt her begin to move her feet once more. Only instead of rubbing her own arches together, she was now very deliberately gliding the sole of one foot over his ankle and down to his toes, and back up again. Repeatedly. Without breaking eye contact.</p><p>She held his gaze and brushed another peck against his pinky, and that little problem he’d managed to take care of earlier began to reassert itself.</p><p>He cleared his throat, growing nervous. “And anyway, you came right into that hospital after me, knowing Modell was armed.”</p><p>She nodded, her breathing deep and calm, her expression unreadable. Her eyes slid from his irises down to his lips, as he’d noticed they often did. When they flitted back up, her face had changed, certain muscles contracting and others relaxing, so that he felt eerily like a solitary marsh deer grazing in the brush, head uptilted at the crack of a twig beyond the treeline.</p><p>She extracted her hand from beneath his now slightly sweaty palm and placed a cooling caress on his cheek, her fingertips scraping over his unshaven whiskers and down to his lower lip, where she let her thumb rest for a second or two before cupping his jaw. Her mouth was hanging slightly open, and she looked at him with what he could only describe as bedroom eyes.</p><p>His straining cock throbbed and pressed against the fabric of his boxer briefs, and he had no idea what to do. </p><p>Well, he had <em> some </em> ideas.</p><p>But he settled on his old faithful, and made a joke out of it.</p><p>“Are you coming on to me, Scully?” he managed to croak out through dry, constricted vocal cords.</p><p>She blinked once, took a breath, and pounced.</p><p>She was all over him before he knew what was happening. One hand in the hair above his ear, another pawing at his chest, the weight of her torso twisting him awkwardly onto his back from the waist up. Her hot, spearmint mouth pinned him to the pillow, her tongue laving against his, and he sucked in sips of air as he gathered his wits. </p><p>Scully was kissing him.</p><p>Scully.</p><p><em> Kissing him </em>.</p><p>He had to get his act together. He had to take back a modicum of control. </p><p>He reached up and held her face in both of his hands, her autumn tresses cascading forward, falling down like an auburn mane over his outspread digits and framing her features twice over.</p><p>“Scully, what’s happening?” he asked, checking in, making sure. “You didn’t pilfer any of that yajé from Dr. Bilac’s place, did you?”</p><p>She smiled wide, flashing her teeth at her chosen prey. “Go with it, Mulder,” she breathed, and kissed him again. </p><p>This time, he matched her intensity, still supporting her skull in his palms. He lifted his head from the pillow, meeting the force of her mouth with equal pressure, and ran one hand down her neck, resting his index finger gratefully at the dip of her clavicle, where he’d watched her bleed out in his dream.</p><p>She loomed above him, her breasts rising and falling with her rhythmic panting, their hips side by side, the extent of his enthusiasm as yet unrevealed to her. He wanted to pull her to him, press the hard length of himself against her, show her that he appreciated her with his body just as much as he always had with his mind, but first, he wanted to be sure that’s what she wanted, too.</p><p>“Wait,” he mumbled against her writhing lips.</p><p>She sat up and away from him, holding herself up with one hand on his pillow. Her lips were pink and swollen, a sheen of mixed saliva glistening in the lamplight.</p><p>“What’s the matter, Mulder, don’t you want to?” she asked, but without waiting for an answer, she moved her other hand and delicately peeled back the covers, hunting for a non-verbal response to her question. </p><p>Mulder watched her face as she slowly lifted up the sheets, delaying the moment of revelation when she would be absolutely certain that this was an ambush he did not want to outrun. He was the weakest of the herd, separated off to the side, just begging to be taken down, dragged off to the nearest tree and devoured. She drew back the comforter the vital final inches, and knew it. The sizable ridge in his boxer-briefs told her so.  </p><p>She peered back at his face with a look of lustful delight, practically purring. “It’s back,” she grinned, and he blushed, wincing. </p><p>So she had seen it earlier. </p><p>It was his turn to shrug, this time half in apology.</p><p>“Come here,” he instructed, his flush fading, and she leaned down to kiss him again, lifting her leg to climb on top of him, but he grabbed her behind the knee and rolled her onto her back, settling himself between her thighs.</p><p>She laughed, then gasped as he rolled his hips into hers, grinding himself against her sex through layers of thin cotton, feeling the tantalizing soak of desire between her legs. She drew up her quadriceps and pulled him into her froggy embrace, folding her elbows behind his neck and groaning into his mouth as his tumescence rode the wet seam of her panties.</p><p>He lifted himself backwards, grateful for his daily discipline of morning push ups, and watched Scully as her eyelids batted open and closed in response to the varying amounts of pressure he was applying to their languid frottage. She peered up at him now, squeezing his hips with her adductors, and tangled her fingertips in his chest hair, trailing down until she reached the elastic banding around his hip flexors. She tilted them both sideways on the mattress and dipped one delicate palm beneath the fabric at his waist, the pads of her fingers grazing the tip of his erection then taking firm hold of his aching girth, stroking him with a fluid twist of the wrist, feathering kisses along his slack jaw all the while. His balls jumped at the sensation of her hand on his shaft, her confidence and dexterity making him even harder.</p><p>But this wasn’t right. </p><p>Mulder gently reached for her arm and stilled her movements. She pulled away from his face, frowning.</p><p>“Mulder, I thought you wanted-” she began, but he stopped her with a shake of his head.</p><p>“I do,” he assured her. “But ladies first.” </p><p>With that, he guided her onto her back again, and took advantage of his position at her side to trace his right hand up beneath the hem of his loaned T-shirt and down into the soaked valley of flesh beneath her plain cotton briefs. It was nothing he hadn’t done before: it was high school and college and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it was back row at the movies and spin the bottle and seven minutes in heaven; it was kid stuff, really, to slide - yes, slide, he was deliriously happy to note - into third base and pleasure a woman manually. </p><p>But tonight, it felt like a revelation.</p><p>The heat of her engulfed his third and fourth digits, the rest of his hand brushing against soft curls and cushioned by flesh and liquid yearning, and she spread her knees to allow him room to work. His wrist stretched the fabric of her panties, and he circled his buried fingers within her, polishing the smooth roof of her inner walls and tugging upwards with each carnal circumference.</p><p>Scully rewarded him for his efforts with heavy panting and the occasional muted whimper, her mouth falling open and her right hand creeping up his back, her nails scratching at his rhomboids. Her other hand fussed at the top sheet, and she flexed and stretched her legs as he worked. </p><p>She turned her face towards him to resume their kissing, and he covered her mouth with his own, lifting his thumb from its position limply resting against her upper thigh, and applying pressure to her clitoris, matching the circles of his fingers within. Scully moaned now, an open throated release, the sound of her pleasure reverberating down his larynx, and he felt his own need begin to drip out of his sensitive tip, marking the inside of his underwear.</p><p>“Oh my god,” she rasped, lifting her hips to draw him deeper inside her, and the angle gave him the chance to slip his index finger alongside his working digits, all three now soaked to the third knuckle. </p><p>Scully thrust her head back into the pillow, ceasing their heavy petting in order to tilt her chin up and frown, crying out. Her right hand scraped the skin of his shoulder blade and she threw her left elbow over her eyes, covering her face as she mumbled and moaned and tossed her face from side to side, bucking her hips to the rhythm of his insistent pumping. </p><p>“Oh <em> god</em>,” she shuddered, “I’m gonna-”</p><p>But she didn’t need to tell him that, because she froze beneath him for a divine moment, a curse on her lips and a breath caught in her throat, and convulsed and flowed around his hand, his knuckles trapped in a pleasurable vise, and then she was panting and twitching and clutching, feral, gasping his name and seeking his mouth with her own, and he saw that seven minutes was the real kid stuff: this was a heaven he wanted to lock himself inside forever.</p><p>Their mouths fumbled for one another in her post orgasmic melee of limbs and spent lungs, and she held his mandible like a precious archaeological find, treasuring his nearness, weak with gratitude. He laid down beside her and gingerly removed his hand from between her legs, but she grabbed his retreating arm and rested his palm over the top of her underwear, cupping her lust-warmed sex. She started at the renewed contact with her apparently still sensitive clitoris, and nestled her forehead against his cheek on the pillow. Her eyelids drooped shut.</p><p>“Hey, Scully,” he teased, “You’re not going to fall asleep on me, are you?”</p><p>But she already had.</p><p>He looked down upon her scratch-marked face, her proud but delicate nose curving gently above her lips, which were slightly parted and dewy. A soft snore rippled her tongue. </p><p><em> What a time for a cat nap</em>, Mulder mused with considerable regret.</p><p>He tucked an errant strand of red hair behind her ear with his little finger, and went off to solve a problem in the bathroom. </p><p>Scully needed her rest. He could only hope she’d be on the prowl again tomorrow night. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I wrote a whole cat-based smut fic, and not once did I manage to make a pun on the word pussy. I’ll show myself out.</p><p>Let's not get into a cat fight, okay? Feed me (with comments)!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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